Riders for Health and Bridgestone team up to improve health services in Africa

Published: 04 April 2013

Bridgestone have announced a partnership with the international not-for-profit organisation Riders for Health to support their lifesaving humanitarian efforts to improve health care within Africa.

Riders for Health manages motorcycles and ambulances for health-focused partners in sub-Saharan Africa. Now, with Bridgestone’s support, Riders will be able to mobilise more health workers enabling them to deliver vital health care to remote rural communities.

Bridgestone will provide tyres for the fleet of vehicles managed by Riders for Health in Africa, and will also support Riders’ fundraising and promotional programme throughout the MotoGP season.

Speaking about this exciting new partnership, Riders’ CEO and co-founder Andrea Coleman said ‘The partnership with Bridgestone is important and significant. The MotoGP paddock has long supported Riders for Health, raising hundreds of thousands of pounds for our life-saving work across Africa. Now Bridgestone, MotoGP and Riders are showing that tyres are as critical a factor at the highest level of motor sport as they are to reaching the worlds’ most neglected people with health care.

With partners like this, combined with the skill of Riders’ African colleagues we are closer to seeing a world where health care reaches everyone, everywhere.’

Bridgestone Motorsport Manager Hiroshi Yamada added that ‘Both Bridgestone and Riders for Health have enjoyed a long and successful association with MotoGP and to support them in their great work makes sense on many levels.

‘By working together with Riders for Health I feel we can create a real positive change in the global community. It pleases me that Bridgestone and Riders for Health are able to use the popularity of MotoGP to help improve the lives of people in Africa and show that while for most people motorcycling may be a mode of transport, in the right hands a motorcycle can be used to help save lives.’

For more information on Riders for Health’s activities, visit www.riders.org.